


Sleep

by aromaticguava



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, My First Fanfic, Pre-Slash, Sleep, Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 05:18:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1886508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aromaticguava/pseuds/aromaticguava
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For now, there is sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> I've been reading fanfiction for years and never written any. So today I decided I'm going to put one up NO MATTER WHAT and here's what it is. EEP, first fanfic! Be gentle, please!

John isn’t the kind of man who usually stays awake at night mulling over life. Well, at least not when nightmares aren’t waking him up, but that was all in the past now, distant past. A pretty sound sleeper as a child, he had no trouble adjusting to the erratic sleeping schedule of a medical student, and later that of an army doctor; he could stay awake as long as he was needed and gladly grab his rare bits of free time to doze off in the most unusual places and positions.

It served him well, good training for times with Sherlock Holmes.

Today was an odd day. He’d been walking around with a particular feeling all day, a sort of familiar feeling that he was once well acquainted with but had sort of drifted apart from in time. It had burned low in the pit of his growling stomach when he and Sherlock had passed up breakfast in favour of some poor sod lying stone cold on his face in a dainty little kitchen in a dainty little house on the outskirts of their beloved city. It kept its presence known at all times. When Sherlock went down on his hands and knees and took in deep, noisy breaths to determine the constituents of the dead man’s dinner. When Sherlock let his cold, reptilian eyes roam over the buxom young thing crying about her bad luck bringing a seemingly random corpse into her sterile abode. When Sherlock rattled off his deductions to a replacement DI not worth the grime in Lestrade’s fingernails.

It gnawed at John’s thoughts like a spoiled brat, demanding his attention continuously. It was there while they broke in to a suspect’s garage and Sherlock’s scarf snagged on an aspersion in the door. It was there when they were chased down by a couple of humungous mastiffs across a metal scrap yard and Sherlock nearly tripped on an old hubcap beaten into the pitch. It was there when they were about to get into a barge but Sherlock had an idea, jumped back onto the shore, and proceeded to disappear; John found him in a real estate agent’s office a couple of hours later.

It had always been there, John supposes, that feeling in his core. Today was unusual simply because he hadn’t been able to ignore it as effectively as he had done yesterday.  
Which is odd because no one is usually able to identify the _when_. When someone is asked to recall the exact day they started or stopped feeling a certain way about something, they are usually unable to point it out. Most people say it’s a gradual thing, that it must have started around such or such time, or maybe earlier, they didn’t really know, but they do know when they “officially” did something about it, because you can mark events on a calendar but you never think of marking something as abstract as the beginning of an idea. Most times, when you begin thinking about it, you don’t even know that one day it’s going to be a full-blown thing, a bit of a big deal.

John knows he will never be sure when this feeling actually started, but he knows he now has an exact date to when he stopped ignoring it at all. John is not daft, he knows what he is feeling.

John sits up in bed. It’s important to sit up now, to not go back to sleep. It is imperative that he does something, does it _now_ , so he swings his legs over the edge of his bed and stands up. No dressing gown, not right now, too distracting. Down the stairs, two at a time, they’re familiar now, no need to look at them to use them. He pauses at the foot of the stairs, scanning the living room with wide eyes. Not on the sofa, not at the Bunsen burner in the kitchen, weird. Violin untouched, sofa cushions looking decidedly fluffy, magazines in a neat stack like he had left them earlier that day. John pulls at a drawer. Gun unhandled. Hmm.

John walks into the kitchen. Everything is like he remembers having left it that morning. He does not expect bread crumbs or unwashed plates or anything daft like that. No traces of food, of course, but no developments on his cyan mushrooms either. 

Dear lord, had Sherlock actually gone to bed? John had excused himself and gone upstairs right after they’d come home from a neurotic killer-chase and several crying women. While undressing, he’d imagined Sherlock would don his safety goggles (or not) and proceed to continue his shrooms experiment or slump into the sofa thinking about the complexity of tweed patterns and their tested yield strength. Or play the violin. Or talk to Yorik. Even after their short supper downstairs (Sherlock spent all of it cracking an unopened mussel with a napkin and some salty water. He even ate the thing when it finally subjected to his ministrations), Sherlock hadn’t looked tired at all. Well, well.

“Twist my arm,” John mutters, “Sherlock’s in bed.”

He steps softly into the tiny corridor with the door to Sherlock’s room at its end. The door is ajar, so he stealthily slips in, no creaking of the hinges or anything. Smooth. As smooth as sneaking into your flatmate’s room while he’s sleeping can ever get.

All the lights are switched off but unclosed window curtains let in enough city lights for John to see Sherlock sleeping.

Sherlock is stretched out on his bed. His head is missing the pillow by a couple of inches and only the angle at which his legs are askew is preventing them from dangling over the edge of the bed. The upper half of his torso is on its side, but the lower half is on its back. Any person subjected to this sort of torsion is usually in pain but Sherlock looks perfectly at ease in this pose.

As a doctor with knowledge of the body’s muscles and the strains it can take, John winces a bit at the sight. Sure, blue silk pyjama bottoms and a smooth, marble chest in very flattering lighting is extremely easy on the eyes, but that position is a guaranteed route to back pain, minimal necrosis of the extremities and pins and needles, not to mention a severely literal pain in the neck. John can’t help it, he reaches forward and puts his hand under Sherlock’s head.

Sherlock’s eyelids flutter a little, but otherwise his breathing doesn’t change. Very, very slowly, John lifts the sleeping man’s head and pushes a pillow underneath it. He heaves a silent sigh of relief. At least with the head elevated, this weird way of sleeping won’t affect Sherlock too much.

“Do you have a question, John?”

John starts, but not too much. Such things would have caused him to jump out of his skin once upon a time, but now he’s a veteran. This is next to nothing.

He doesn’t say anything, though, because he doesn’t have a question. Sherlock can be forgiven for his assumption, seeing as he’s just woken up. He doesn’t look like it though. No puffy eyes, no groggy speech; it’s like just opening his eyes was equivalent to having brushed his teeth and had a cuppa. John smiles.

Sherlock frowns.

“Not a question, what?”

John shrugs. What is he going to say that will tell Sherlock everything? _It’s my stomach, there’s something in there that just won’t go away anymore._ John smacks himself in his thoughts. _I have to mark today in the calendar. It’s important, I wish you’d figure out why._ Ugh.

All he does is look at Sherlock, hoping (seemingly) against hope that Sherlock sees some human lark fluttering about delicately inside him. Sherlock stares into his eyes. John is almost holding his breath, the slow, shallow affairs making his lungs kick up a little fuss. The angle of sight is slightly lesser than it could’ve been, helped by the fresh pillow-provided head-elevation; eye strain is minimal, they could stare for _minutes_.

Sherlock closes his eyes and some of John’s internal organs pause while he tries to make sense of this development. What was Sherlock doing, was he shutting out John? Did he want him to go away? Was he putting this off because he found it off-putting? Was this too human for him? Was this – god forbid – boring? How could this possiby be boring, what other flatmate had Sherlock had sneak into his room at night to practise some chiropractor-esque prevention-is-better-than-cure deal?

Then John feels a nudge on the side of his thigh. He looks down at it and sees Sherlock’s hand pulling at his pyjamas. John breathes in again.

*

Early next morning John is woken up by pins and needles in his right arm. He opens his eyes a little, squinting against the sunlight pouring in through the gap in the curtains and looks at his side.

It’s Sherlock’s bed he’s in, and that feeling, that warm glow in the pit of his stomach seeps throughout his entire body. His arm is trapped under Sherlock’s very heavy head, a living-tissue substitute for the friendly pillow John put there yesterday. Said pillow is absent from the bed.

Also, John’s arm is nowhere near his head, which means Sherlock has travelled another couple of inches south of the bed. Pale, long legs dangle over the edge.

He looks sweet, like a child, no wrinkles decorating his face, which is buried in the crook of John’s elbow. John giggles a little, quietly.

It feels wonderful, the lack of words and explanations. Brilliant sea-green eyes hidden behind soft eyelids framed with eyelashes laden with several dreams. They were not for cutting open and analysing and deducing, not now. There had just been quiet acceptance and invitation. Promise. Only for him.

After the pins and needles are rubbed out, later, he will go to his room and mark yesterday’s date on his desk calendar. For now, there is sleep.


End file.
